The 80-year-old hit out at the government this evening at the BAFTAs as he collected his award for Best British Film for I, Daniel Blake, which looks at the UK’s ailing benefits system.

He was heard addressing the audience as he picked up his accolade, passionately telling them: “The poorest people are treated by this government with a callous brutality that is disgraceful.

“It’s a brutality that extends to keeping out refugee children that we promised to help and that’s a disgrace too.”

He went on to say: “But films can do many things: they can entertain, they can terrify, they can take us to worlds of imagination, they can make us laugh and they can tell us something about the real world we live in – it’s a bit early for the political speech, I’m sorry, but in that real world it’s getting darker, we know."

Ken’s words were met with applause from the star-studded crowd at the bash, and it appeared he was making reference to the government’s recent apparent U-turn on its pledge to help unaccompanied children fleeing conflict in Syria and other conflict zones.

He was not the only one getting political at the glitzy ceremony in London’s Albert Hall, host Stephen Fry took a pop at US president Donald Trump over his tweets aimed Meryl Streep.

BBC

Ken Loach slammed the government at the BAFTAs

It’s a brutality that extends to keeping out refugee children that we promised to help and that’s a disgrace too

“I want to call you Dame Meryl because if you were British you would have been damed five times over,” he said as he went to greet her.

Manchester By The Sea director Kenneth Lonergan also spoke about Trump after he won the gong for Original Screenplay, speaking about his teenage daughter’s sadness following the results of the US election last year.